Awe and Despair

Watching To the Wonder was a confusing experience. Leaving the cinema I was elated and dizzy from two hours of intensely beautiful imagery, but I was also left feeling pretty cold. The love story is sad and horrible because it seemed so banally doomed, and the characters were very hard to like or empathize with. That could be blamed on the scene structures, which were fleeting, sometimes only mere moments, and layered upon each other in the same unending rhythm as waves against a beach. Each contain very little dialogue and are hard to grasp. But then it can be blamed only in small part. I couldn't understand anything about Ben Affleck's character or why these two women loved him, but then again I'm not sure if I was supposed to, he was one of the main mysteries (along with like, God).

Luckily for my blog the obvious success of the film is visual, and so the obligatory screencaps. Scrolling through them quickly will produces a similar effect as watching the film, I swear.